Crabb(y) Judge Rules Against National Day Of Prayer

Posted by Larry Miller on April 18, 2010 under How | Be the First to Comment

The recent ruling by a Federal judge that the National Day of Prayer is an unconstitutional exercise of the national government should come as a surprise to no one. The courts have been moving in that direction for the last hundred and forty or so years. They have moved from affirming the value of Christianity in maintaining the public good to neutrality to outright hostility at times.

The aptly named US District Judge Barbara Crabb noted that she was not opposed to prayer or that her ruling should not be interpreted as disparaging its value. However she was basing her decision on “case law”… and therein lies the problem. What she is really saying is that she is not looking at the constitution… she is not looking at statutes enacted by legislators… but that she is looking at the decisions of other judges. That somehow these men and women in black robes were equal, if not superior to our founding documents and the elected representatives, at least in their own minds and in the minds of those who choose to accept their self-serving pronouncements.

The rulings she cited came, for the most part, from people hostile to the founding principles and citizen values. These people, were of the opinion that laws and documents did not necessarily mean what their creators intended them to mean, but what the judiciary could decide they meant as whims took hold. For many of us this is called “legislating from the bench”, and is the reason selection of judges is vital. The results of this deification of the judicial branch are self evident.

Some people and groups are rightly upset about this abuse of judicial power in taking us from a time when judges shared our values to a time when they sit in judgment, not only on criminals and our laws, but on our society as a whole. We cannot really take back our country without taking back the courts and placing limits in judicial review of everything we do. Initially the states had the ability to put a stop to federal intrusion. The civil war ended the concept of states rights as a viable practice when federal troops ravaged the south.

However, before we get too bent out of shape about this, we really need to consider our ways and our values. We do not need the courts, or the national government to give is a day of prayer. This may be just the motivation we need to begin seeing the citizens doing what is right and making the government into a, once again, body that serves the people. We can gather and pray without federal approval.

One of the things we need to remember in our prayers that day and everyday is that we have a government that would do such a thing as withhold it’s support from the citizens looking to a source of beneficence and power other than itself. This ruling and the unwillingness of the current administration to deal with it should make clear to those who believe the nanny state is the vehicle for doing God’s work among the poor and needy, that the people in the White House are not in tune with the Creator.

One need only look at the events surrounding the demise of Herod Agrippa to see that our God does not take sharing His glory lightly. Those who stand against Him are not our friends and allies. “Vengeance is mine” says the Lord. Perhaps we need to step back a bit and make room for Him to do His work. We have no more ability to save ourselves than Barack Hussein Obama has to destroy us.

We need to do what we know to be right… celebrate the National Day of Prayer… and give up the idea of a Christian friendly government, at least in the immediate future. The colonists themselves led the fight against their imperial masters. There was no government to do it for them… kind of like today. So on our National Day of Prayer, we can gather in groups, or take time individually to pray for our country, our government and our fellow citizens, that not only will our temporal problems be resolved in a Godly manner, but that those around us will be in place for the life following this one.